Review / 200 Words Or Less
Goldfinger
Hello Destiny

Side One Dummy (2008) Scottie

Goldfinger – Hello Destiny cover artwork
Goldfinger – Hello Destiny — Side One Dummy, 2008

Men in their late-thirties making vague statements about the future's uncertainty under the guise of it being punk rock, there's something concerning about this. It's as if their quarter-life crisis is stretching into mid-life, arresting their development into adulthood. Hello Destiny, the newest album by Goldfinger, finds the SoCal band exactly in this position, angry at the world, rehashing the same bland rhetoric they started pushing since they became a "political" band at the turn of the century. While the music - fast paced, somewhat heavy punk that characterized the early Fat/Epitaph sound - certainly isn't anything to be ashamed of, it also seems kind of stale for a band that's been doing this for close to fifteen years. I'm not saying you have to reinvent yourselves every album, but a little variance would keep things interesting. And no, the ska/ reggae tracks on the album don't count because that, too, is a shtick now tired. Of course I can't say that I didn't see this coming, this was released on Side One Dummy. Their releases by MXPX and the Suicide Machines prove this is a label where bands that once were go to die after being eaten up by the major label machine.

6.0 / 10Scottie • May 26, 2008

Goldfinger – Hello Destiny cover artwork
Goldfinger – Hello Destiny — Side One Dummy, 2008

Related news

Go It Alone Return To Action

Posted in Bands on January 6, 2005

Recently-posted album reviews

Alien Nosejob

How A Mosquito Operates
Anti Fade, Iron Lung (2026)

The one-man band of Alien Nosejob continues to crank out short, angry hardcore in quick bursts. I've lost count of how many records Jake Robertson has now released under the name. I'll just say that while the first couple took some direction changes, the project seems to have found its footing in 1980s-influenced hardcore. With 17 songs in 24 minutes, … Read more

Cancer Bats

Give Me Dirt
Marshall Amplification PLC, New Damage records (2026)

ALBUM HIGHLIGHTS – “Bright Eyes of Gold”, “Give Me Dirt”, “Long Tooth”, “Fools Like You” Almost exactly two years ago, on 8th August 2024, Cancer Bats played Conne Island in Leipzig – a choice they would live to regret. Unbeknownst to them at the time, the centre had slowly become renowned for its radical politics and, more recently, the ban … Read more

Tyler Sonnichsen

The Dead Milkmen
J-Card Press (2026)

When I saw The Dead Milkmen at Toronto’s Diamond Club back in the late 1980s, the floor was a volatile, beautiful mess of colliding subcultures. It was like different species of house flies bumping into one another, wondering what the hell you were doing in the mason jar. You had suburban high school pocket-pen-protector pencil-neck nubile nerds, college radio snobs … Read more